You might associate Costco with bargains but on Sunday afternoon, that warehouse store in Jefferson County was also the scene of an emergency. But thanks to a quick thinking employee, who has been training for another job as a firefighter, the emergency didn't turn out tragic.
It occurred during closing time on Sunday. The last shoppers were moving through the checkout lines when Costco employee Adam Simpkins noticed an elderly man having a seizure.
"I just had a cart here and was taking groceries off here and loading them into a cart and looked up for some reason, and he was standing on the other side of the belt with his cart unloading his groceries ... He was still standing but falling back, his wife was trying to help him," said Simpkins.
"He was foaming. To see all that, you kind of panic," said Martha McClinton, another Costco employee.
"As soon as I ran over we said, 'Call 911,'" Simpkins said.
"I called 911 and Adam instructed me to tell them what he was doing," McClinton said.
"I yelled them updates, I told them what the status was. I told them he's out of seizure and told them CPR was in progress," Simpkins said.
Simpkins has performed CPR before. He's a volunteer Golden firefighter on his days off.
"So that helped me know how to deal with the situation. It was just a blessing from God that I was here," Simpkins said.
Especially when you consider Simpkins normally has Sundays off.
"This was the first Sunday I've worked in two years," Simpkins.
The scare has given Simpkins an idea.
"I'm going to try to get a program together training more employees for CPR and defibrillator training," said Simpkins.
Simpkins didn't get the man's name so he has no idea how he's doing. He is hopeful everything turned out fine. In the meantime, he's looking into those CPR classes for all the employees at that Costco location.
Copyright 2006 by TheDenverChannel.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
